The poem gives us a brief, unflattering portrait of a man the title calls a "vulgarian," someone crude or lacking refinement. We see only fragments of him: a mouth that "rose at noon," described as "a red sad thing," and a "thick white short hand." The body parts seem to stand in for the whole person, which makes him feel both exposed and reduced.
The speaker's attitude is mixed. The middle lines are harsh: "we should be the first to doubt him / lord of nothing." That sounds like contempt, a refusal to take his pretensions seriously. Yet the "we" also seems to include the man himself, as if he ought to doubt his own authority. And the last image softens things. His hand is "like a letter to the void," an attempt to reach out that nobody will answer.
The mood is bleak, quiet, and oddly tender. Mockery gives way to something closer to pity, and the poem leaves us with a sense of futile, lonely effort.